Category: Uncategorized
-
FOIA: When the Exemptions Swallow the Rule
I’ve been researching and writing over the last few years on privately ordered—what the government calls “non-regulatory”—approaches to online IP enforcement. The gist of this approach is that members of trade groups representing different types of online intermediaries (broadband providers, payment processors, ad networks, online pharmacies) agree in private contracts or less formal “voluntary best…
-
“E agora José?” The current status of Marco Civil da Internet
I hope non-Brazilian readers will forgive me, but I could not find a better expression to summarize the current situation of the Brazilian Marco Civil da Internet. “E agora, José?” The expression can be translated into English as “What now, José?”, and is quite popular in Brazil, having its origin in a famous poem by Carlos…
-
ECHR Fast-tracks Court Case on PRISM and TEMPORA (and VERYANGRYBIRDS?)
So. The NSA and GCHQ piggyback on Angry Birds to spy on its 1.7 billion users. potential terrorists. Not only that, but everything on smartphones can be compromised: “if its on the phone, we can get it”. Will it ever stop? A few days ago, the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECHR’) made the unique move…
-
Top Tech Policy Stories of 2013
As the year draws to a close, it’s time to review the top tech policy stories of 2013. (1) NSA Surveillance. The most important story by far was the revelations about the scope and scale of surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency and allied services. It took a major leak of documents by Edward…
-
Software backdoors and the White House NSA panel report
Yesterday the five-member panel appointed by the President to review “Intelligence and Communications Technologies” issued its report. The report is serious and substantial, and makes 46 specific recommendations for change. I expect to have a lot to say about the report and its aftermath, but for today I want to focus on one small aspect:…
-
Princeton CS research on secure communications
Continuing our series on security research here at Princeton Computer Science, I’d like to talk about how new information about government surveillance is driving research on how to secure communications. For a long time, users and companies have been slow to adopt secure, encrypted communication technologies. The new surveillance environment changes that, with companies racing…
-
Digital radio broadcasting in Brazil, a technopolitical struggle.
On the last week of November/2013 the second edition of ESC took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. ESC is the acronym to “Espectro, Sociedade e Comunicação” (Spectrum, Society and Communication); as the name suggests people in this meeting discussed a fair use of the Radio spectrum in order to empower society by the use…
-
Digital Activism and Non Violent Conflict
As a CITP fellow last year, one of my goals was to get a new project on digital activism off the ground. With support from the US Institutes of Peace and a distributed network of researchers we pulled together an event dataset of hundreds of instances where people tried using information and communication technologies to achieve…
-
Inject New Energy into Problem Solving – Principle #8 for Fostering Civic Engagement Through Digital Technologies
In response to my recent post arguing that the Federal government needs to use the social web more effectively as a tool for improving information sharing between the Federal government and the public, Michael Herz from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law reached out and directed me to a comprehensive report he recently authored…
-
CITP Call for Fellows, Postdocs and Visiting Professor for 2014-15
The Center for Information Technology Policy is an interdisciplinary research center at Princeton that sits at the crossroads of engineering, the social sciences, law, and policy. CITP seeks Visiting Fellows and Postdoctoral Research Associates for the 2014-2015 academic year who work at the intersection of digital technology and public life, including computer science, sociology, public…